Crooked Media - Red-pill-y elegy

Tuesday, July 16, 2024 BY CROOKED MEDIA

-President Joe Biden, insisting to NBC’s Lester Holt that, no, he does not need to get back on his horse, because he’s totally right there.

Disgraced former President Trump picked a running mate with some hardcore authoritarian views. Just how committed to democracy is Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH)?

Trump once famously fantasized about being an American dictator on “day one.” Now, he’s chosen a veep, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), who seems to think that leaves the whole rest of the year to do a lot of very dictator-adjacent stuff. Vance has come a long way since he worried Trump might be “America’s Hitler,” and has since taken a lot of positions that seem… well, like he’s the kind of guy who’s going to encourage some of Trump’s worst strong man instincts.

Like Trump, Vance holds a deep seated belief that the government is rigged against the Republican Party. Vance espouses unfounded claims about a “deep state” cabal bent on thwarting Trump’s agenda. Vance is precisely the guy that the architect of Project 2025, the notorious right-wing plan to remake the federal government in the first six months of a Trump presidency, wanted for this job. Project 2025 is the controversial plan written by Trump’s buddies that calls for supercharging executive branch power, embedding hardcore Trump loyalists throughout the government and ramming through a host of right-wing policies. That’s basically exactly what Vance wants to do, and more.

Vance recently told a podcast he thinks Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state.” And if the courts object to this move? Vance said Trump should ignore them — a stance fundamentally at odds with how our Democracy functions. Unsurprisingly, this is the same guy who said wouldn’t have voted to certify the 2020 election and fundraised for January 6th rioters.

Vance is the kind of guy who can articulate Trump’s gut instincts, and make his ideas happen, Zack Beauchamp, a senior correspondent at Vox, told the What A Day podcast.

Vance has evolved from a one-time “Never Trumper” to the “physical incarnation of Trumpism,” who in some ways is “more aggressive” about the policy and the ideology that’s been built around the MAGA movement than Trump himself, Beauchamp said. “I think JD Vance will be a good executor of Trump’s will and in power, he will do what Trump needs him to do in order to enact his major plans for reshaping the American government,” Beauchamp said.

Vance likes to embrace foreign strongmen, too, just like Trump. He has called for the “de-woke-ification” of schools inspired by Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and dismissed the idea that Putin could march in Poland or Berlin as “preposterous”. Vance insisted Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk should “consider showing some appreciation” Tusk criticized Republicans senators for blocking aid to Ukraine. (Also Vance: “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”)

President Biden has called Vance a “clone of Trump.” Time will tell if he’s just a clone… or, perhaps, some kind of unfortunate upgrade.

Speaking of project 2025, Trump endorsed a major tenet of the Republican backed effort to overhaul the federal government in a video posted to his campaign website Tuesday. “I will immediately reissue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the president's authority to remove rogue bureaucrats,” Trump says in the video. “And I will wield that power very aggressively.”

If Trump follows through with this plan if he wins in November, he could impact as many as 150,000 federal workers. Trump could move as many as 100,000 civil service jobs outside of the Washington, D.C. region and reclassifying another 50,000 positions as political appointees, according to reports.

The idea here is to create a government totally accountable to just one man at the top: tinpot Trump.

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The top brass at the Democratic National Committee is pushing forward with a plan to hold a virtual vote on Joe Biden’s presidential nomination ahead of the party’s convention, in an attempt to quell the brewing rebellion of Democrats who have called for him to step aside. Surely shoving through Biden’s nomination will make the two-thirds of Democrats who are already unhappy with the current nominee come around.

Even as the DNC moves to boost Biden, Democrats on Capitol Hill continue calls for the president to drop out. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) warned a private donor meeting of a “wipeout” if Biden remains at the top of the ticket, according to the New York Times.

President Biden is gearing up to announce support for major changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including term limits and an enforceable ethics code, the Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with his plans. Maybe he’ll announce they’ll get their own yacht in Indonesia, so Justice Clarence Thomas can stop using the one belonging to Harlan Crow.

Trump will demand peace talks between Ukraine and Russia if he wins the election, Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán wrote in a letter to other European leaders obtained by the Financial Times. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Viktor Orbán: Three of the world’s most trustworthy leaders!

A New York jury found Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) guilty on all counts in his federal corruption trial for a broad scheme to use the power of his office in exchange for hundreds of thousands in cash payments, gold bars and a car. Damn, you can’t even get bribed in gold bars anymore, because of “woke.”

Trump’s former United Nations Ambassador and erstwhile primary opponent, Nikki Haley, is set to speak at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday as the GOPcontinues to push its empty “unity” message.

Trump parroted RFK Jr.’s dangerous antivaxx rhetoric in a phone call leaked on social media. I think we can all agree that the internet was a mistake!

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California became the first state in the nation to ban schools from requiring employees to inform parents of students’ sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), aims to stop schools from outing students to their parents without their consent.

Biden plans to call on Congress to take legislative action to incentivize landlords to cap rents hikes to less than 5% annually by tying the cost of housing to a key tax write off.

Stocks hit yet another all-time high as conviction grows in a September interest rate cut. Reminder: that recession everyone feared hasn’t materialized. Damn you, Bidenomics!

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